Last partner drops out of Coos Bay coal terminal project

2 Apr

Cross Posted from TDN

The last investor of a proposed Coos Bay coal terminal has dropped out, leaving three coal export terminal projects still alive on the Columbia River.

According to the Oregon International Port of Coos Bay, negotiations on a lease agreement Metropolitan Stevedore Company of Wilmington, Calif., known as Metro Ports, ended Sunday. The company and the port had first signed a tentative lease agreement in October 2011.

The project was in serious jeopardy last month when two major investors, Mitsui & Co. and Korean Electric Power Corp., dropped out of the project. Port of Coos Bay officials said they would continue to market the property to other maritime businesses.

The announcement is a victory for conservationists, who have mounted a big campaign against proposed Pacific Northwest coal terminals.

“It is hard to imagine that anyone would want to risk getting in bed with risky and desperate coal industry,” David Petrie, director of Coos Waterkeeper, said in a written statement.

In the lower Columbia region, two companies have filed permits to build coal terminals. Milennium Bulk Terminals is seeking to build a $643 million dock west of Longview, and Australia-based Ambre Energy is hoping to build a barge dock at Port Westward near Clatskanie. A third company, Texas-based Kinder Morgan, has stated it plans to submit permits next year to build a second coal terminal at Port Westward.

In Whatcom County, developer SSA Marine has filed permit to build the Gateway Pacific terminal, which would be the largest coal dock in North America.

One Response to “Last partner drops out of Coos Bay coal terminal project”

  1. Damon April 2, 2013 at 12:48 am #

    Reblogged this on Awakestate.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: